The Astronomy of the Kamilaroi People and Their Neighbours
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The Astronomy of the Kamilaroi People and their Neighbours Robert S. Fuller1,2, Ray P. Norris1,3, Michelle Trudgett1 1Department of Indigenous Studies, Warawara, Macquarie University NSW 2109, Australia Email: [email protected], [email protected] 2Macquarie University Research Centre for Astronomy, Astrophysics and Astrophotonics, Macquarie University NSW 2109, Australia 3CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science, PO Box 76, Epping, NSW, 1710, Australia Email: [email protected] Abstract The Kamilaroi people and their neighbours, the Euahlayi, Ngemba, and Murrawarri, are an Aboriginal cultural grouping located in the northwest and north central of New South Wales. They have a rich history, but have been missed in much of the literature concerned with sky knowledge in culture. This study collected stories, some of which have not previously been reported in an academic format, from Aboriginal people practicing their culture, augmented with stories from the literature, and analysed the data to create a database of sky knowledge that will be added to the larger body of Aboriginal cultural knowledge in Australia. We found that there is a strong sky culture reflected in the stories, and we also explored the stories for evidence of an ethnoscientific approach to knowledge of the sky. Notice to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Readers This paper contains the names of people who have passed away, and refers to events, such as massacres, which may be upsetting. 1. Introduction The Kamilaroi people have a long history in Australia. Aboriginal Australians are descendants of people who left the Middle East approximately 70,000 years ago (Rasmussen et al. 2011: 98). Archaeological evidence of the arrival of Aboriginal people in Australia provides a wide range of dates of settlement. Archaeology has dated the Mungo Man burial in the Willandra Lakes region of New South Wales (NSW) to more than 40,000 BP (Bowler et al, 2003: 840). This supports evidence of a “fast-track” spread across the Pleistocene continent of Sahul (Australia, New Guinea, and Tasmania). Therefore, Aboriginal people may have lived in the area included in this study, north and northwest NSW, for at least 40,000 years. When Major Thomas Mitchell, the government explorer, made the first expedition into this region in 1831, he found bushrangers and drovers settling in the area between the Liverpool Range and what is now Tamworth; a rich agricultural area now known as the Liverpool Plains. As the first writer about this country, Mitchell’s comments on the “native” population provide a limited insight into the culture of the Aboriginal peoples of this area before further European settlement. Mitchell indicated that the people lived in a rich environment, with many resources around the rivers that they utilised (Mitchell, 1838: 84, 95, 100). His few remarks on language include Einèr for Aboriginal woman, which is remarkably similar to the Kamilaroi Yinarr, and appears to show contact with Kamilaroi people (ibid: 78; Ash et al. 2003: 155). In the period after Mitchell’s first expedition, pressure from European settlers, particularly in the Liverpool Plains region, led to resistance from the Kamilaroi people in the area, and a resultant rapid increase in conflict. Broome (1988: 101) estimates that 16 European, and 500 Aboriginal people died between 1832 and 1838 in the region, many from historically known massacres of Aboriginal people. Sveiby and Skuthorpe (2006: 25) have estimated the population of the Kamilaroi cultural group before settlement to be 15,000. By 1842, it is thought that there were approximately one thousand Kamilaroi in the area (ibid: 26). The rapid reduction of population from 15,000 to 1,000 in the 54 years after European settlement resulted in a displacement of the Aboriginal people of this cultural bloc towards the northwest of the Kamilaroi area (confirmed by participant P2). The current population of people identifying as having Kamilaroi ancestry is approximately 26,000, and Euahlayi ancestry, 3,000 (estimates from Kamilaroi Nation Applicant Board provided by M. Anderson). Fig 1 the approximate area of the cultural group and languages spoken (Sveiby & Skuthorpe, 2006) The geographic boundaries of the area defined for this study depended very much on the definition of which Aboriginal language groups were included in this study. Mathews (1900: 576, Plate VIII) showed an area of northern NSW roughly encompassing the modern understanding of Kamilaroi country, but including the Darling River, thus including a number of smaller language groups to the West. Howitt (1904: 50) defined the Kamilaroi area as: “In short, nearly the whole of the pastoral district of Liverpool Plains.” The only Aboriginal description of the area (Sveiby and Skuthorpe; 2006: 24) described a cultural group of 26 communities (including the Kamilaroi) as “bounded by the Barwon River to the east, the Warrego River to west, and the Bogan River to the south” (in their map, shown in Fig. 1, the northern boundary approximates the NSW/Queensland [QLD] border). We used this definition for the boundaries of this study, and added a limited survey of the Murrawarri and Ngemba language groups, who are located to the West and southwest of the Kamilaroi/Euahlayi community (one of the participants, P2, said that Sveiby and Skuthorpe were incorrect in using the Warrego River as the west boundary of the cultural area, and they should have used the Culgoa River). 1.2. Recording the culture of the Kamilaroi Ethnology, the study of the cultures of man, was formalised by E.B. Tylor in 1865 (Radin, 1929: 9). The literature about Aboriginal culture during the period 1850-1900 changes from that written by country police and members of the clergy, to that of the first ethnologists and then anthropologists. A major factor in examining the published information from the 19th century is that there were over 250 separate language groups existing at the time of European settlement (Walsh, 1991: 27). Many language groups barely survived long enough after European settlement to appear in the anthropological record as a distinct group. There are only a limited number of early sources on Kamilaroi culture, often from the northwest of the Kamilaroi area, including Ridley (1856, 1872, 1875, 1878), Fraser (1888), Greenway (1878, 1901), and Fison & Howitt (1880). R.H. Mathews was a surveyor who worked in the area extensively, eventually publishing a large body of work (Matthews 1900, 1904, 1905) about Aboriginal religion, folklore, and ceremony, with a strong emphasis on southeast Australia. Contemporary with Mathews was K. Langloh Parker, the wife of a grazier on the Narran River, who formed a close relationship with the local Euahlayi people, and collected a large body of folklore (Parker, 1898, 1914; Parker & Lang 1897, 1905). The only recent attempt to describe Kamilaroi culture is “Treading Lightly” by Sveiby and Skuthorpe (2006), which is mainly about the Nhunggabarra band of the Euahlayi language group. 2 1.3. Archaeoastronomy and cultural astronomy Archaeoastronomy is the interdisciplinary study of ancient, prehistoric, and traditional astronomy and its cultural context (Krupp, 1994: ix). Cultural astronomy is the study of the effect of astronomical knowledge or theories on ideologies or human behaviour. (Campion, 2003: xv). In the Australian Aboriginal context, archaeoastronomy and cultural astronomy were first reported by Stanbridge (1857), who wrote about the sky knowledge of the Boorong people (Hamacher and Frew, 2010). Subsequent writers have reported Aboriginal knowledge and stories of the sky, but it wasn’t until Mountford (1956: 479-504) wrote extensively about this aspect of the 1948 Arnhem Land expedition that it was treated as a separate subject. Mountford (1976: 449-483), similarly wrote about this aspect of central desert culture and then Haynes (1996) wrote extensively on the subject, and suggested that Australian Aboriginal people were “the world’s first astronomers” (ibid: 7). Subsequently, Johnson (1998) has written a study of general cultural astronomy knowledge from a wide selection of language groups, and Cairns & Harney (2003) have written a detailed study of the Wardaman people’s knowledge. A number of other researchers, including Clarke (2007), Hamacher and Norris (2009, 2010, 2011), Norris (2007), Norris and Hamacher (2009, 2011), Norris and Norris (2009), and Tindale (1983), have developed the current body of knowledge of Aboriginal cultural astronomy, both in general, and for specific language groups. This body of knowledge is now growing rapidly, and includes evidence that Aboriginal stone arrangements and bora sites included links to the sky (Fuller et al, 2013; Hamacher et al, 2013; Norris et al, 2013). The use of sky knowledge in prediction of resources, and in cultural interpretation of law, has long been accepted, but we also describe the use of astronomy in an ethnoscientific manner. We define ethnoscience as an intellectual endeavor to describe the natural world within an appropriate cultural context, resulting in predictive power and practical applications such as navigation or timekeeping. Ethnoscience therefore has the same intellectual goals as modern-day western science, but without the trappings associated with Western culture and scientific tradition. For example, the Yolngu people explained the tides as the Moon filling and emptying as it passed through the ocean at the horizon, which is a perfectly sound explanation given the available evidence. This evidence-based approach to understanding the world in an appropriate cultural context correctly predicted how the height of the tide varies with the phase of the Moon, with the highest tide (“spring tide”) occurring at the full or new moon (Norris and Hamacher, 2011: 4). While there is a growing body of knowledge of Aboriginal cultural astronomy, there has been no corresponding study of the Kamilaroi language group and their neighbours, and this study was developed to fill the gap through a comprehensive survey and analysis of the literature and current knowledge.